In awaken, Jade Driscoll explores the suffering that often accompanies existing in a human body. Many poems center around experiences of anxiety and depression, exposing how mental illness can impact a person’s life. Driscoll’s poems successfully create a sense of the inescapable. No matter where the speaker goes, suffering seems to follow. Even when asleep, the dreamscape conveys an intense and all encompassing pain. In “dreaming of nightmares,” the speaker, even when devoured by killer bugs, still longs “for times when the tortuous rapping on my window/was more than simply a branch.”

In the standout poem titled “notes for playing the role of formerly-suicidal,” we witness a mostly one-sided conversation between a director and an actor. The director provides instructions for how the actor must dress, speak and carry herself. Space is provided for the actor to respond, but the actor does not or cannot speak. In a moment of clarity, the speaker finally says, “I think I’d like to play a different role.”  The poem asks us to reflect on important questions: What roles are we willing to play? Who is creating these roles?  Why are we so often willing to play along? The poem reminds us that the stories we cling to only hold power if we believe those narratives are true. 

This chapbook packs a quick series of punches, but mercifully pulls back in the last few pages. In one of the final poems titled “jade (adj.),” the speaker reclaims the language and identity once used against her. The final poems feel like that moment of relief right when we wake up from a relentless nightmare. The pain we felt while asleep, real or not, can be released when we’re awake. Or we can let it ruin our day. The choice is ours. If we’ve really paid attention, that pain can transform us.

Cody Tieman
June 15, 2023